I stood checked for a moment - awe, not fear, fell upon me - and whist I stood, a solemn wind began to blow, the most mournful that ever ear heard. Mournful! That is saying nothing. It was a wind that had swept the fields of mortality for a hundred centuries.
Interpretation
The quote reflects a profound moment of awe in the face of mortality and the passage of time.
In this quote, Thomas De Quincey describes a moment of deep reflection where he is overcome not by fear, but by a sense of reverence and awe as he experiences a melancholic wind. This wind symbolizes the enduring nature of mortality and the weight of centuries of existence, inviting the listener to contemplate the impact of time on life and the feelings of loss and nostalgia that accompany such reflections.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about the importance of cherishing life.
But my way of writing is rather to think aloud, and follow my own humours, than much to consider who is listening to me; and, if I stop to consider what is proper to be said to this or that person, I shall soon come to doubt whether any part at all is proper.
The mere understanding, however useful and indispensable, is the meanest faculty in the human mind and the most to be distrusted.
Nobody will laugh long who deals much with opium: its pleasures even are of a grave and solemn complexion.
Surely everyone is aware of the divine pleasures which attend a wintry fireside; candles at four o'clock, warm hearthrugs, tea, a fair tea-maker, shutters closed, curtains flowing in ample draperies to the floor, whilst the wind and rain are raging audibly without.
Thou hast the keys of Paradise, oh, just, subtle, and mighty opium!
Flowers that are so pathetic in their beauty, frail as the clouds, and in their coloring as gorgeous as the heavens, had through thousands of years been the heritage of children - honored as the jewelry of God.
We are as ignorant of the meaning of the dragon as we are of the meaning of the universe.
No society can exist if respect for the law does not to some extent prevail; but the surest way to have the laws respected is to make them respectable. When law and morality are in contradiction, the citizen finds himself in the cruel dilemma of either losing his moral sense or of losing respect for the law, two evils of which one is as great as the other, and between which it is difficult to choose.
Why did one straw break the camel's back?_x000D_ _x000D_ Here's the secret:_x000D_ _x000D_ The million other straws underneath it.
The full meaning of life, the collective meaning of all human desires, is fundamentally a mystery beyond our grasp. As a young man, I chafed at this state of affairs. But by now I have made peace with it. I even feel a certain honor to be associated with such a mystery.
Drugs. If they did not exist our governors would have invented them in order to prohibit them and so make much of the population vulnerable to arrest, imprisonment, seizure of property, and so on.
All wars are civil wars because all men are brothers... Each one owes infinitely more to the human race than to the particular country in which he was born.
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